Alexandr Gorokhovskiy- PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam
Alexandr Gorokhovskiy
- PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam
Distilled beverages historian and consultant
About
7
Publications
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Introduction
After spending nearly two decades in the spirits industry as a consumer marketing, brand education and trade advocacy executive, I have recently moved back into academia. I am currently a PhD candidate at the School of History, Culture and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, writing up a thesis on the origins of Russian vodka. My research interests more generally concern social and economic history of alcohol as a whole, as well as its many meanings in cultural and social rituals.
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Education
July 2001 - May 2005
September 2000 - June 2004
September 1996 - June 2001
Publications
Publications (7)
This paper challenges the popular opinion that it was the revenue-seeking government that imposed low-cost and highly addictive spirits on Muscovites in mid-sixteenth century. In reality, the development of vodka in Russia was very similar to what was happening elsewhere in Europe: at first used in therapeutic purposes, distilled alcohol gradually...
This paper challenges the popular view that clergy played a positive role in the development of distilled spirits in Muscovy and argues that on the contrary, Russian Orthodoxy’s emphasis on mysticism and its neglect of secular sciences was blocking the diffusion of the already available technologies – including that of distillation. Latin was consi...
The origins of distillation are not clear, but the conventional view holds that it began with the Greeks. Early alchemists distilled various liquids in Alexandria in the first century AD, and experimentation with distillation continued in early Byzantine Egypt. This knowledge together with classical Greek scholarship more generally was accumulated...
It is usually assumed that Russia’s obsession with vodka began in mid-sixteenth century, when Ivan the Terrible started to open state-owned drinking houses (kabaks) in Moscow after he had seen similar establishments during his conquest of Kazan. However, all references in current historiography to the appearance of first kabaks during the reign of...
This paper traces the history of Nalivki district – the first compact settlement of foreigners in Moscow – and looks at how the exclusive right to distil and sell spirits granted to them by the Grand Prince has transformed Russian social habits. According to travel accounts of 16th-century Russia, Vasiliy III permitted to build on the far bank of t...
In this paper, I argue that a typically Russian perception of vodka as something that can both arouse appetite and stimulate digestion has its roots in early modern period, when it was used mainly as a prescribed medicine and the word ‘vodka’ itself referred strictly to cordials distilled with local herbs or foreign spices. I briefly review what we...
The present paper studies the possibility that distillation technology could have been acquired by Russians from the East rather from the West. This may have occurred after Batu Khan’s invasion of 1237-1240, when most of the Rus’ territories were incorporated into the Golden Horde as vassal states. The result was the intensification of cross-cultur...
